Interview with Edy Hurst

CB: How long have you been gigging in stand-up?

EH: I tried doing two gigs at the Manchester Comedy Store King Gong about 3 years ago and absolutely died on both occasions (I got an aggregate time of a minute and ten seconds) – I’d done some ‘presenting’ stuff at school that people happened to laugh at and mistook that for Stand Up – so it was a bit of a baptism of fire going from that into the heady atmosphere of a Gong Show crowd. After a less than successful expedition into the Heart of Darkness I didn’t dare do stand up or any comedy related business until a little bit before I entered the 2012/2013 Tickled Pig Competition. Since then I’ve tried to gig whenever I can, being at University in Leeds I have to juggle it with my other commitments. I had a resolution this year to perform at least one gig every week and that went pretty well until I went off to America to work over summer and didn’t get a chance to perform for the three months I was there. Since coming back though I’m trying to catch up again – any break from comedy for a month or longer always then feels like you’re blowing the dust of an old old book you found in the attic, but you’ve got to read it in front of an audience without the book with you and that it has to be funny. Not really that much like the book thing in hindsight

CB: How would you describe your comedy?

EH: Man standing on stage saying words and moving. Quite strange, very silly.

CB: Which comedians influence your comedy?

EH: LOADS! Well, some, not loads. A fair few. Lots. I’ll write a list. My Grandad used to let me watch Monty Python and eat smoky bacon crisps whenever I went to visit, so I think subconsciously they have always shaped my comic intuition. Love a good crisp joke (guess they didn’t shape it that much). I used to watch a lot of cartoons also, I’d say too many cartoons. Too many. I’d put that down as the main reason I was never going to be a physicist or even grasp a rudimentary understanding of physics.

I started writing this answer and had to stop explaining why I chose each comedian otherwise I’d never stop writing. So I don’t go on too much for one answer, the sorts of comedians who have really influenced me are acts that I saw and realised “You can do that on stage!?” I love acts that play on stage; especially with the representation of a persona and blurring lines between what’s real and what’s a lie. The idea of stand up comedy is ridiculous to me, so I’ve always been drawn towards acts that just act silly rather than trying to be cool, you can make a far better point to people who wouldn’t listen through nonsense than you can reason. See? Even trying to write a little bit I’ve garbled for too long.

Andy Kaufman

Steve Martin

Tony Law

Maria Bamford

Paul F. Tompkins

Vic and Bob

Stewart Lee (although I feel like its a bit of a given for most wannabe comics now)

The Mighty Booth

Robin Williams

Eddie Izzard

These aren’t a top ten, and certainly aren’t the only ones but are the first few that come to my head whilst writing this.

CB: Did you always want to go into comedy?

EH: Yes. In some form or another, selling my autonomous creativity – which seldom seems to escape humour (or at least people laughing at it) – has always been the dream. Born Standing Up by Steve Martin was the book that made me want to do Stand Up comedy, How I Escaped My Certain Fate by Stewart Lee was the one that made me try again.

CB: How do you go about writing your material?

EH: I’m still figuring that out. As a new act (and for me this is what defines a ‘new act’: you can do 300 gigs but if you haven’t figured these out you’re still going to seem new (that and being new also makes you new)) I think there are two massive challenges that are faced off-stage:

a. Your Persona, how you filter material and thoughts into a representation on stage. A person is always an exaggeration of something, it takes years to find a voice you’re comfortable with and can say what you want whilst being detached enough from it to say it over and over or tweak it for an audience.

b. The method through which you practically write material, and this one is a toughie. Persona is largely a mediation of emotion, here its thoughts – how do you say what you want to and what interests you but make it entertaining and funny to others?

I’ve got a lot of material from nattering at my girlfriend in the car (does that make her a writing partner?) and every now and then I’ll come up with something on the spot on stage that sticks in my head for a while afterwards. I try to carry a small notepad or now my phone around and makes notes as ideas come or put shorter jokes on my twitter (@edyhurst), then write them more thought out in a bigger book. Sometimes I’ll get an idea for a joke or a bit right in-between sleep and waking and they never work out very well but are always good fun. I used to write as if each things were a set piece, therefore an idea would usually come out more or less completely born, I’d just have to put words in-between the actions, but now I’m attempting to write with words more (as the literate are wont to do). I’m trying to get used to punching bits up and improving my writing – I’ve got a lot of experience with stage performance from my past in the travelling circus [citation needed], and I’m trying to get my writing to the same standard. I’m writing a lot though, and I think that’s one of the most important things as a stand up, you have to approach the time off stage with as much effort and thought as the stuff you do on it. Inevitably though, that thing you’ve spent all week writing and rewriting will blow up in your face when you’re on stage if you haven’t thought through how you’re going to say it and stage it out, so make sure you give it a lot of on stage practice, I’ve found that’s where the funny apex of your bit is found. Stand up comedy is a marriage of writers craft and stage craft (is that precocious enough for a new act yet?).

CB: Do you gig as a stand-up full time or is it more of a part-time hobby? If so, do you find that your main job influences your material?

EH: At the moment its part-time, but I’m treating as much less of a hobby than I was 6 months ago – I’m trying to learn how to ‘work’ as a comedian rather than just perform. This is something that I think a lot of newer acts who use whimsy and non-mainstream style material can forget – you can’t hide behind an audience not ‘getting it’ – even if they don’t try to crash your airplane with some style. All the seasoned ‘alternative’ acts who are big now have had to work in rooms that were work rather than play (Tony Law for instance worked for ten years as a club comic) its part of the difference between being a professional and a keen amateur.

As a Fine Art student I think I have been influenced a lot by the art theory and performance art side of things, which is great but at the same time gives me a challenge of figuring out how to put this art theory into practice in a way that doesn’t deliberately alienate and put off your everyday crowd. The classic gong show crowd will seldom go in for a surrealist performance art piece, but they will do if you deliver it in the right way. In theory at least, as long as you find a way to approach it to the room there should be no material that is undoable – whether that means my cat opera should happen is another question, although the costumes are darling.

I’ve done a fair share of theme park work in my short lifetime (I worked on a live version of Doctor Who which was awesome) and used to perform a very short one act play on my experience as a ride operator – but the problem is that you have to sign so many confidentiality waivers before working at those places that I can’t really talk about most of it on stage without running the risk of being sued, or even worse, yelled at. I try not to talk about me in the real world on stage, some comedians do an awesome job of it but its not for me (yet). I’m still too young to have anything useful to say about life that wouldn’t make me come of as a sucker player perpetrator to the majority of the crowd. I prefer the idea that whilst it is me on stage, it’s a very exaggerated character that can only exist onstage – as a result of this few people will talk to me after shows.

CB: What do you find the most enjoyable and frustrating parts of the open mic comedy circuit?

EH: A lot of the things in open mic comedy are strength and curses. You’re working at a loss and travelling a lot. Sometimes you can travel two and a half hours to be booed at, other times you can travel down the road and receive a standing ovation.

A thing people forget when watching a lot of big stand up comedians is that an audience is entering the gig with a relationship to that performer already, so if you go into an Eddie Izzard gig thinking “I bloody hate surrealist stream of consciousness” it’s on you for buying the ticket and going to the performance. With a new act, however, you’ve got to introduce and prove yourself. This is bad and good.

Something I really admire Andy Kaufman for is playing with this idea, watch this (if you haven’t seen it already)

The joke is the whole piece, not just the individual parts. What this clip doesn’t show you is what happened when it went wrong, he used to get screamed and heckled at to the point that he would cry on stage. Then subvert it all by showing them that the joke was on them for not trusting the comedian on stage.

So there’s this thing that you get to play about with who you are much more than an established act. Also, what this competitive environment now means is that if you want to do your material that isn’t the norm in a comedy club, you have to got beat the gong show templates at their own game, making you a stronger comic. Whilst I’m not sold on the idea of gong shows, I’ve never failed to learn something from each one I’ve entered regardless of how well I did, and I can’t think of a method better to prevent people who should just not be doing comedy from doing it. If you fail first time at a gong show, some people may just give up, the test of a new acts mettle is whether they’ll get back on stage.

CB: What’s your favourite type of audience to perform to?

EH: People who are willing to let go and be silly – one of the next big challenges for me is trying to get more people on board with me before I go into full nonsense mode. I like the audience participating (not heckling or shouting out in-between but being willing to get involved when I ask them to) as that’s one of the big difference between seeing comedy live and on TV. You get a strange group of people who turn up to comedy shows with an attitude that they’re too cool to laugh, and so won’t invest in nonsense lest they appear *gasp* silly. My act feeds off energy in a room – I’m getting better at raising the energy up myself now, or working with what the audience feels like, but if there’s a room thats really hyped up it makes me up my game that little bit more.

CB: Have you been heckled a lot since you’ve started gigging? Do you enjoy being heckled? What’s the best heckle you’ve had?

EH: I’ve been booed en masse, but as far as heckles go I’ve not really had any personal to the act. I don’t really do material that some could misunderstand or take offence to (unless they just HATE worms) so if an audience member has an issue with me it doesn’t really go beyond a variation of you’re rubbish. Personally, I think that heckling is a bit shitty – a heckle is a completely selfish attempt by an audience member to take attention away from a selfish performer. How rude. It does affect nights, sometimes audience members shout out and are constructive, but I think if you respect live comedy and the act you’ll use a bit of common decency.

My friend and fellow comic Callum Scott has described my act as like both a baby dog and a five year old showing people all their toys.

I did a gong show in the North East a few months back, I was on last and the audience wanted to stop watching the comedy and go on their night out. I went on for about two minutes with this guy near the front screaming ‘You’re shit’ over and over again. I wasn’t sure if this was encouragement or he didn’t understand what jokes were. I then realised trying to explain how jokes work (the bit I’m saying now, that’s the start and that bits not funny, you’ve got to wait for the funny bit. I know this is boring but just wait as it does get funny, it’s just how jokes work) didn’t help the situation. The best part though is that I got gonged off, but because a splinter cell of maybe 10 – 20 within the 300 strong audience wanted to hear the rest of my act, they brought me back on to do one joke. There is one joke that I used to do in my act that was the perfect bad joke – it was deliberately crass and crude sans wit but also whimsical and surreal, within a venn diagram of comedy enjoyed by audiences crude whimsy fits nowhere. This joke went down as well as I expected, but I at least felt like I had some power in what is usually a fairly powerless position for a new act.

CB: What advice would you give to new acts thinking of starting out in comedy?

EH: I’m sure most of the decent advice has already been said in other interviews so I’ll just say this:

1. If you’re thinking about it, do it already. Lots and lots and lots and lots of people think they can do comedy, and even more perform it.

2. Write a lot, perform a lot and watch a lot of comedy.

3. Don’t judge a crowd before you go on stage, never ever apologise for your material, don’t give up on a performance. Those three are the things that will eat you up after a bad gig.

4. Don’t write stuff that doesn’t interest you

5. Don’t write stuff that’s hateful just because it’s funny – just because you can say that on stage, doesn’t mean you should.

6. Stand Up is not the only way to do comedy, and it’s very difficult to make a full career from it. Writing for other things is a great way to work through ideas and figure out processes. I do a podcast where I write most of the sketches and songs, and it’s given me a lot of breadth to perform comedy in such a different way.

7. In the words of Simon Munnery “Give up, and carry on.”